The UCT-CERN research centre invites you to Smashing Discoveries! A journey to the origin of matter and the universe. This public lecture on particle physics at the Large Hadron Collider celebrates the re-launch of the UCT-CERN research centre.

The guest speaker, Dr Andreas Hoecker is spokesperson of the ATLAS experiment at CERN. His research in elementary particle physics covers collider physics experiments at CERN and Stanford, USA. He studied physics at Bonn, Germany and earned his PhD at Orsay, France.

Since 2005, he is a Research Physicist at CERN and a member of the ATLAS experiment. He was elected ATLAS Spokesperson for the period of early 2021 to 2023.

The UCT-CERN Research Centre was founded in 2008 by Prof Jean Cleymans to consolidate UCT’s research in High Energy Physics by bringing together theoretical physicists with experimental physicists working on the ATLAS and ALICE experiments at CERN. Since then, the centre has gone from strength to strength, now comprising nominally 7 academics and 20+ postgraduate students. The centre’s research ranges from the fundamental to the applied. We develop the theory of the Quark-Gluon Plasma: a unique state of matter created at extremely high temperatures such as those present a millionth of a second after the Big Bang and study this state of matter with the ALICE experiment. With the ATLAS experiment, we study the properties of the heaviest fundamental particles in nature, the Top quark and the Higgs boson, and address fundamental questions on the nature and stability of the universe. We explore Technology Transfer from High Energy Physics to the real world in fields as diverse as Muon Tomography, Medical Imaging, and Real-Time Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence.

In 2023, the centre was re-accredited by UCT with Dr James Keaveney appointed as the new Director. The event serves to celebrate and re-launch the centre, and communicate the exciting fundamental science of the ATLAS experiment to the general public.

The lecture will be followed with a Meet & Greet poster session with the postgraduate student researchers of the centre including light refreshments.